


Point Nowhere

by Deejaymil



Series: Original Stories by a Bored Australian [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Australia, Childhood, Flash Fic, Gen, Short & Sweet, Turtles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 23:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17610824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: They say there are turtles down at Point Nowhere.





	Point Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited July 2019.**

They’re not supposed to be on the beach when the turtles hatch, but he’s never been one to worry about what’s ‘not supposed’. It’s easy to sneak out. He wiggles the screen off the window during the day when Dad’s at work and Mum’s busy, so it doesn’t make noise, and runs into the night barefoot and bouncing from heel to heel as the asphalt stings his toes. It’s dark, sun’s gone down, but still hot. Gonna be a hot Christmas, Dad says, and he hates that.

It’s always hot here, and he misses the snow and the cold and not being sweaty all the time. _You’ll like it there_ , Mum had said about this place at Point Nowhere, some shanty town falling off the edge of Australia like it doesn’t want to be here either. _Just give it a chance._

He gave it chances and chances and hated it, but then he found out about the turtles.

“They hatch a hundred at a time,” said a girl at school.

“Thousands at a time,” someone else corrected her.

“More than you know how to count.” The first girl, again, and he’d wondered how many there really were. They were inside, the sun too baking to let them go outside for their recess, and he was sitting with a sandwich on his knee and picking at the scabby flakes of skin that always felt burned right through now. When the teacher had let them go, he’d gone to the library and found a book on turtles, _these_ turtles. Their turtles. His turtles, in a way, because that’s one thing London never had. And if they’re as cool as the books and the silly girls say they are…well, maybe there’s something to like here after all.

The beach is dark and quiet and he drops his bike into the shell-grit and digs his toes in, too. Waves beat the shore, ready to welcome new life, waiting along with him and the hungry seabirds squawking somewhere overhead, out of sight. There are other people—down the beach, their torches skipping about—but he ignores them.

Just waits and waits until the sand nearby buckles, the smooth top cracking, and then he waits some more until the first flicker of moon on shell glints. Only one, at first. He watches, silent, leaning forward.

There are more.

In the end, he forgets to count.


End file.
